The Beer Nut: Great Pumpkin appears on store shelves

Wednesday

Sep 28, 2011 at 12:01 AMSep 28, 2011 at 6:09 PM

The Cambridge Brewing Company has earned the reputation over the years of brewing some of the best beers produced in all of New England. The only problem was, the beers were only available at the brewpub in Cambridge, Mass., or at a few select locations on draft. The problem is now solved.

Norman Miller

The Cambridge Brewing Company has earned the reputation over the years of brewing some of the best beers produced in all of New England.

The only problem was, the beers were only available at the brewpub in Cambridge, Mass., or at a few select locations on draft.

The problem is now solved. The Cambridge Brewing Company bottled its first beer, the Great Pumpkin Ale, and will continue bottling other beers going forward.

"It kind of made sense to lead off with a big splash in the autumn because the Great Pumpkin is so popular," said Cambridge's brewmaster, Will Meyers. "We knew it would get plenty of notice and attention. We can't make any more of that beer in our brewpub. This was the only way we could accommodate people who want our pumpkin ale."

The Great Pumpkin Ale lives up to its name. The problem with most pumpkin beers is they're either overly spiced, or to get the right flavors to work, they're high in alcohol. The Great Pumpkin Ale is a rare pumpkin that is full in flavor and low in alcohol (4.4 percent alcohol by volume).

The Cambridge Brewing Company will bottle all of it's beers in 22-ounce bombers.

The Great Pumpkin Ale may be the first, but Meyers said Cambridge will be brewing several other beers.

"We see the bottling line as a kind of expansion of our brewpub," said Meyers. "We do have a pretty specific plan, and the Great Pumpkin Ale will be our only seasonal and the only beer we make multiple batches of."

"We feel like there are some great ambers, pale ales and porters our friends are already doing and there's no reason for more of them," he said. "We're not going to do our year-round beers, instead we're going to take advantage of our precedent-setting ways."

The next two beers to be bottled will be the Tripel Threat, which the late beer expert Michael Jackson said was the first American brewed Belgian-style tripel in 1990, and the Audacity of Hops, a big, hoppy Belgian-style double IPA.

Those beers will be brewed two or three times a year, and Meyers said Cambridge will also brew a new beer every month or two.

The planned beers include the Sgt. Pepper, a saison brewed with pepper, which will come out around Christmas. Talking from experience, the Sgt. Pepper is one of the best food-pairing beers you can have. Instead of putting pepper on your meal, drink this.

That will be followed by the Bannatyne's Scotch Ale, then the Weekapaug Gruit (a rare beer brewed without hops), the Heather Ale, Red God (IPA) and Mind Left Body (session, or low alcohol, IPA).

"All of the beers we plan on releasing have appeared on our tap lines at CBC in the past," said Meyers. "Our plan for the first year and a half, or year in a quarter, is that every once in awhile, someone will be able to get a bottle of beer from us."

The other goal is to expose people do various styles of beer they may never had before. That, Meyers said, is good for the whole craft brewing industry.

"We just want to co-promote our friends and peers who are doing the beers we like," said Meyers. "The more you can expose craft beer fans to different kinds of beers, the more the entire genre benefits."

Norman Miller is a Daily News staff writer. For questions, comments, suggestions or recommendations, email nmiller@wickedlocal.com or call 508-626-3823. Check out The Beer Nut blog at http://blogs.wickedlocal.com/beernut/ or follow the Beer Nut at his Twitter page at www.twitter.com/realbeernut.

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